Content display devices such as smartphones, netbooks, gaming devices, PDAs, desktop computers, televisions, and laptop computers are now ubiquitous. These devices commonly include hardware providing network connectively to web servers, and software (e.g., web browsers) providing an interface for users to request and view content from the web servers.
Some content provided by the web servers, and displayed on these content display devices, is increasingly dynamic in nature while other content remains relatively simple. In addition to graphically intensive games, for example, it is very common for a variety of content associated with a webpage to include animations, which may be carried out by rendering a series of bitmap images to create the appearance of motion. Internet webpages often have pictures and video images to render. Often, coupled with graphically intensive images are images that are simpler to render. These might include, for example, a solid blue sky or a solid gray background of the webpage. Common and ongoing issues with the display of this type of content are maintaining the quality of a user's experience while managing limited resources.
More specifically, users have become accustomed to viewing animated content in a smooth, fast, and uninterrupted manner. Although content display devices continue to be produced with more and more advanced graphics processing resources, these resources are often still not fast enough to provide seamless, consistent animation. Moreover, these advanced content display devices often demand more power, which is often limited. As a consequence, many current devices often perform less than desirably, and the user experience will almost certainly suffer further from performance deficiencies in the future.